Thirteen London councils work together to save £150,000 a year on recruitment

Thirteen London boroughs are working together in a staff recruitment initiativethat could save more than £150,000 a year.

The Shared Recruitment Service is due to go live in the spring. It is believed to be the largest local government joint project of its kind in the country.

Dean Shoesmith, HR director at Sutton Council, is chairman of the London-wide Heads of HR group.

His team researched and developed the innovative new way of bringing together boroughs’ recruitment services to save time and money.

“At the moment, job applicants get a variable service across London. We started working on a joint basis for recruitment advertising with two other boroughs back in 2003 and this worked well,” he said.

“So we looked at other ways we could work with more authorities on other aspects of the recruitment process. As other boroughs join in, the discounts will increase – we expect to save the council £50,000 in the first year, and £150,000 in each following year based on the current partnership numbers.”

The service will be outsourced to a specialist provider, supplier Tribal Recruitment and Resourcing, who will deal with all applicants, handling shortlisting online, as well as references and medical clearance.

It is planned that there will be minimal redundancies, and redeployment opportunities are being investigated where possible, Shoesmith said.